WHAT SHALL WE DO NEXT?  

   Well, it took long enough, but we finally have a small start of this website going.  So now I want to talk about our plans and what we have to do, and about what you can do, to prepare for the big push the politicians are now putting on for the 2008 elections.  (Say, who's that pretty girl in the upper left corner??)

   Just by reading the links in the rows and columns that surround this central text, you can see where we're heading -- a true Hyde Park with ample opportunity for give and take, where you not only can bitch and moan about what's going on in America today, but propose your own solutions and analyze the proposals of other writers even as they consider yours. 

   And you can prepare yourself for more of the same old same old nonsense the politicians and professional propagandists will be raining down upon us.  Then we just may have the satis-faction of a fighting chance of getting back at them, to get our sorry-assed pack of politicians to pay attention, to face up to their obligation to deal with our problems in a constructive way.

   I'll now take a moment to talk about this site, the problems I've had and expect to have with its creation and management, and where we're headed when this monster gets all set up.  It is plain to see that if this site catches on, it will be a monster to manage.  But if we expect to make an impact on the politicians, we must somehow or other get together before they put us all in the poor house or get us killed.  And we have to start somewhere.  And the year 2008 is America's Rubicon.

   As we all are aware, to one degree or another, there's some pretty heavy stuff going on "out there," and America has been heading "that-away," skirting the edge of the abyss, for over a half century.  Plainly, it's time we stopped bickering and calling each other names and settle down to getting something constructive going.  But where to start? 

   Perhaps the basic problem, the crux of the matter, is that our politicians, for the most part, are not really good at much of anything, except getting elected, and re-elected, and re-elected.

   Oh, there are a few truly gifted, really capable men and women in politics who know what has been going for all these years, who understand these problems and who have the capacity to solve them, or at least to find and enlist the support of the people that do, and who are not in the pockets of the really powerful interests that control our government.  But even they are so stuffed with rubber chicken, so taken with pressing the flesh and mouthing the clichés and slogans that got them elected, with meeting the day-to-day crises, whether real or contrived, that pop up all the time, that they may well have lost the capacity and the initiative to say and do what has to be said and must be done if we are to survive as a people, as a way of life, and retain the lasting value of our basic  institutions.

   Face it folks, you have to be a very peculiar individual with an inordinate lust for power and love of having your back-sides kissed to live the lives and do and say the things our politicians must do to become elected or appointed to high office.  And you'd damned well better not dare say what you think or an outraged minority will either drive you out of office or into the nut house.

   But that's the system, our system.  And, basically, it's the same problem with every other political system the peoples of the world now know or have endured in the past.  We'll return to this fundamental problem and how to cope with it in much more detail in our Democratic/Republican Coalition sub-site.

   Oh, yes.  You asked about the pretty girl in the picture.  That's Gillian.

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